


The Devil's Progeny

by KatherineKrawl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Hannibal is Lucifer, M/M, Ravage - Freeform, Vulnerable Will Graham, Wendigo, dante's inferno, ice hell, they are smitten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 13:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21356962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatherineKrawl/pseuds/KatherineKrawl
Summary: Will opened his eyes at the sound of a bird. A shrill cry that rang through the glass walls and gripped him by the throat.He sat up, and saw the other side of the bed made and empty, as the air buzzed with the distant rattle of the coffee grinder. His bare feet touched the floor.The lake was still, solid, with one lone swan sitting along the edge of the hole. Will had created it a day earlier to help the fauna find their water and food. He had hacked at the ice with a heavy, blunt axe, until his hands had been sore and his arms tired.The swan cried a dreadful screech, and Will rushed to pull his sweater over his head and hoist up yesterday's jeans. He hurried out through the back door and followed the noises of peril to the lake, where he could see the white bird flapping her wings and shaking her head. The webbings of her toes were frozen to the surface, where the water had washed over them while she was drinking.She was trapped on the ice.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 137
Collections: RAVAGE - An Infernal Hannibal Anthology





	The Devil's Progeny

**Author's Note:**

> This short story was made for RAVAGE - An Infernal Hannibal Anthology  
It was a lot of fun to write and a big honor to be part of this project!

He had never _presumed_ to find humanity, whenever his path crossed another. He always shaped and colored any entity from a perfectly blank page in the sketchbook of his mind. When meeting Hannibal, however, the markings of black coal had quickly spiraled down, down, far beneath the surface, into icy, untrodden paths.

Paths discovered, until lost. 

Paths followed, until home.

_The path to paradise begins in hell._ \- **Dante Alighieri**

**

The back of the house was best described as a giant, almost singular window that overlooked the widely stretched lake behind the garden. _“Another prison made of glass,”_ Hannibal had said, as he traced the damp rubber seal along the rim. One for them to share this time; confinement and isolation, neither enforced nor entirely voluntary, but with time to heal wounds and fade memories.

They took the house.

Will sat in the study, listening to the gentle crackles of snoozing flames as he sipped his scotch and watched their glass prison slowly freeze over into ice. Winter had fallen over the valley, and the rain that had stained the surface wet was now blooming with flowery crystals.

“Would you join me for a walk?” Hannibal asked him, stepping into the lethargic warmth of the room, fully dressed for winter weather and holding Will's coat by the wool fabric of the shoulders; an offer. 

“I always do.”

These pre-dinner strolls had become part of their routine, where they would walk the circumference of the lake; now a spiritless, hauntingly pale gray, and still beneath the thick layer of motionless ice.  
Together, they would watch the winter sunlight dancing over the surface that resembled shards of broken glass, arranged in perfect chaos, like a shattered mirror. 

And they walked shoulder against shoulder, wool of midnight blue and wine purple brushing with every step, as they watched the small stems of dead trees rising through the ice. Trapped, like frozen prisoners. 

It was perfect, peaceful in its silence, with water blacker than the night sky beneath the solid, cloudy surface. What chaos lived beneath was shrouded in the darkness, but Will could feel the bustling of life ghosting under the crust. 

_“I turned and saw in front of me, beneath my feet, a lake that, frozen fast, had lost the look of water and seemed glass,”_ Will recited from memory with words made of breath against the heat embedded in his scarf. His gaze brushed to the side to see enchantment stirring like flecks of gold inside maroon eyes. 

“Dante,” Hannibal hummed from deep within his chest as he reached and curled a hand around the inside of Will's arm. Leather fingers grasping wool, their eyes met with weight and warmth as Will heard the air rushing against his nostrils. 

_“From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?”_ They stopped in their lazy tracks, and Hannibal's coif shone silver in the dying sunlight, as his eyes captured Will's open, ocean stare. _“The waters become hard like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.”_

Hannibal's fingers dug comfortably into Will's bicep, moving weightlessly along the muscle as the lines of his face curled with mirth. “Job 38,” he said, when Will didn't take the bait, but studied him with eyes as clouded as the ice. The fog was cleared when Hannibal's lips twisted into gentle pleasure, and Will clenched his arm against the gripping fingers. 

“I wouldn't have known,” he confessed with a coy smile, before stepping back into their twilight stroll. 

Dark shadows stretched further as silent time passed.

“Was Christianity a big part of your upbringing?” Will asked, as they witnessed how the ice on the lake reflected the low sun with a blurry haze. Careful flames of a young fire.

“In theory,” Hannibal answered him promptly, as they shimmered together in shades of gold and tangerine. His voice was a distortion between the quiet whispers of the trees and frosted dirt. “Not in passion, nor in practice.” 

Will watched the strong silhouette against the burning sun, lining Hannibal with a halo of fire as he walked amongst the ice, and felt himself leaning further against the straight shoulder that pressed against his.

“I found my own passion within religion,” Hannibal said, earthly eyes gleaming through the shadows as Will openly blinked his skepticism. 

“Your passion is to thwart God,” he posited, and watched pupils push wide behind scrutinizing eyelids, eager to meet him in challenge.

“I have the utmost respect for the Lord's creations,” Hannibal proclaimed, as they followed the drifting path amongst the leafless trees. The frozen ground cracked beneath their boots, but their eyes rested steadily on the other. Both framed in shadows that the low sun brushed around their forms.

“I don't believe in God,” Will said, presenting his words without weight or necessity, as he watched Hannibal receiving them without charge. It was well established how their backgrounds and world views were of different shades, which was where they kept missing each other in their daily struggles, and moral contemplations.

“How can you not, when you look at what surrounds us?” Hannibal asked him, golden eyes dripping wonder as his vision stretched over endless ice. Endless decay. 

Will watched the sharp bones moving beneath the skin, finding back its lively color after years of incarceration. Trapped in glass and allegorical darkness. He watched the eyes of blood and honey. The silver hair, the blue glint of teeth, the purple veins, embedded in the flesh like branching trees. “I'm not,” he said, watching the blown pupils of Hannibal's eyes with blatant relish. “I'm looking at you.”

Hannibal's fingers caught behind the fabric of Will's coat, as he halted their tracks and forced the other man to meet him front to front. There was no humor in the imperious press of his mouth, but his eyes were alight with specks of hunger bouncing off the sunlight like fireflies. “And I at you.”

Will stayed inside the grip of leather fingers and allowed himself to be captured and held, as ocean and earth met in sly, spirited strife. Beneath the skin, Hannibal radiated joy over Will's compliance. _“Beauty is founded on pleasure,”_ he said, his presence swaying in the gentle breeze. _“Sublimity is founded on pain.”_

Will felt the fingers slipping from his coat as he turned himself back onto their path, continuing their tracks. “Edmund Burke,” was Will's smug reply, and he heard Hannibal's gratified hum as he followed close behind.

**

Almost a year had passed since they had relocated to the cold mountains of Blüemlisalp, Switzerland. A time for reflecting, reviving and rejuvenating. Rekindling what had strained and suffered through lost and blemished times, and an opportunity for Will to pick freely at shards of Hannibal's porcelain mask. Cracked, but intact.

Because Will had chosen him; fallen with him and escaped both authority and death with him, but not without proviso. The foundation of their bond was to be redefined and hardened from liquid to solid before they could start a bridge to new beginnings – a desired life for them to share. 

Will needed time to explore the space between his borders, and Hannibal was willing to provide, living their peaceful existence without impatience or restless wandering. He seemed open towards Will's need to seep between the cracks of his armor, and see if he touched humanity, or something far beyond.

“Would you like to say grace?” Will asked with a teasing eyebrow, as they sat across from each other at the dining table, adorned with food and drink of Hannibal's selection. A glint lit in jubilant eyes as Hannibal reached for his wine; dark blood in heavy crystal. 

“I do not worship,” he replied with veiled gratification, as his long fingers curled around the glass. _“I do not serve.”_ Will's skin tightened with hidden meaning. _Non serviam._

“You serve me,” he countered, lifting the wine meaningfully to their line of eyes. Their gaze met over red liquid, through the crystal. “I accommodate you,” Hannibal defied him as he stretched his arm to allow the glasses to graze each other, and release the clear tone of a winter bell.

_Prost.”_

Lips tasted wood and smoke as their eyes lingered through heavy lids. Will had seen them blaze to black, until nearly no whites were visible on the orb. 

“I do not worship,” Hannibal repeated, as he lowered the glass from his stained lips, and reached for his knife and fork to cut into his curried goat stew. “But I do admire.”

Will bit into the buttery soft tissue that burned his mouth with spices and stroked his tongue with flavor. “I remember,” he said, as he licked red curry off his lips. “The fallen roof on the praying nuns.”  
Hannibal smiled around his fork, as his eyes darkened with pleasure made from food and wine, and stimulation. Ever since they had fallen over the edge, those pupils pushed further and wider for room, until they shone raven black in the winter sky.

And Will remembered the Wendigo. The bones of his skull seemed bare in the light of the flickering candles, and the reflective moonlight on the frozen lake. 

“God built Earth, Heaven and Hell and watched the tectonic plates shifting in search for dominance,” Hannibal spoke like a lullaby. 

Will frowned. “God did not create hell,” he said, watching the flames dancing like lovers in the demon eyes. 

“Ah,” Hannibal said, straightening his back with a spirited flex of his shoulders. “Then who did?”

Will's lips curved as he stirred his fork through the red. “Do you not believe in his counterpart?” he asked him, as the knife parted the tender thread of meat. 

“The beast, or the God?” Hannibal replied, and Will watched him sitting across from him with posture, power and peremptory. Hannibal resembled the majestic demon, the Wendigo, breathed and blooded into life.

“Lucifer, Satan, the Devil...” Will trailed with a brief shrug that brushed his shoulders up in his wool sweater. Hannibal enjoyed the brisk gesture among the loaded words with a mere squint on the outer corners of his eyes. 

“You know I don't rely on any notion of good and evil,” Hannibal told him, sipping his wine through pursed lips that lingered on the crystal rim. “We are all made in God's image. The duality of God is that he is neither good nor bad.” Eyes rested on endless eyes. “Our choices lead to different paths, none of which are definable as either right or wrong.” 

Will watched him, seated in the light of the dying sun in his back, casting his figure long and dark over the length of the table. His features were hidden in the shadows, but his eyes shimmered like the sunset on the frozen lake.

“The world is God's canvas, painted with the blood of mortality,” Hannibal said, drifting on the rhythm of his poetry with the aura of stillness and mastery. “Human worshippers ascribe the endless sin and suffering to his banished angel.”

Will swallowed the wine that stroked his throat with a heavy, lingering drag. Hannibal placed his cutlery on his emptied plate. Hannibal's eyes grabbed him, always, like a metal hook behind his sockets.

“In truth, they are one and the same.”

**

Will remembered what he had seen. 

In the office, the courtroom, his bedroom. He had seen it rising from the quiet water of the stream. Skin black as coal. Eyes red as fire and wine. Antlers curling to the ceiling, and flesh tight over hollow, meatless bones. 

The snow lay thick and untouched in the garden, and the ice of the lake shone almost azure in the morning light.

_“The Danube where it flows in Austria,_  
_the Don beneath its frozen sky, have never_  
_made for their course so thick a veil in winter_  
_as there was here; for had Mount Tambernic_  
_or Pietrapana’s mountain crashed upon it,_  
_not even at the edge would it have creaked.”_

Hannibal's words flowed like rushing water, and Will turned to see him standing motionless beside him. Maroon eyes on the frozen lake. 

When he chose to be, Hannibal was maddening silence, leaving nothing but the resonating sound of the blood in your ears.

_“Dante's inferno,”_ Will said, eyes on Hannibal's stark profile against the white winter sky. “The beast frozen in the ice.” He followed blood and honey to the ducks on the bank. “Snarling heads and flailing claws and wings that rouse an icy wind to keep his prison solid, vast.” The ducklings had grown strong, and Will left food out for them during the harsh seasons. It hadn't been long before they had settled near the garden.

“Chewing on sinners,” Hannibal said. A lock of silver hair fell before his eyes, and caught the light like silk. Will released a deep sigh from the pit of his belly and reached, brushing back the strand with his fingers.

“You have been chewing on sinners all your life.”

**

On the outer rim of the woods, where the trees transcended into pavement, there were parkings and benches, and unused bins sprayed with bold graffiti. Whenever they would pass such places on their way to the market or lunch, Will would pick up the littered, empty beer cans to dispose of, fearing an animal might harm itself on the sharp edge of metal. Hannibal would sacrifice a slice of his own conduct by using a gloved hand to hold open the lid of the sullied trash can. 

“Insufferable, polluting, wasteful...” Will grunted as he collected three smashed 20-ounce beer containers that sloshed cold, remaining liquid over his brown leather gloves and made him smell like cheap, overripe hops.

“Lust, gluttony and greed,” Hannibal spoke, a perfect statue beside the opened bin in his dark gray, half-lined coat, his magenta woven scarf and his dark leather Oxford shoes. Silver hair rebelled against the styled coif when teased by gusts of winter wind.

“Sloth,” Will said, as he dumped the beer cans and fast-food cartons in the trash, before Hannibal released the squeaking lid unceremoniously from his grip. 

“Accidia,” Hannibal said, stepping away from the unclean terrain as he glanced over his shoulder. “To be without care.”

They fell in line, brushing shoulders and carrying bags to the Friday market. The fish was fresh, and they never failed to make use of it. “What is the worst sin one can commit, Will?” Hannibal asked him as they strolled along the harbor and watched the boats dancing restlessly on the black surface of the freezing water.

Will caught the rise of light eyebrows, and furrowed his own. He remembered.

“The kiss of betrayal,” he answered, and watched Hannibal's smile against the inside of his scarf. Judas' lips on Christ. For that ultimate sin, his head was chewed by the beast's sharp teeth, and his back flailed by its shredding claws, in perpetuity. 

“The betrayal of the Lord's progeny,” Hannibal said, and Will breathed a forceful rush of air through his nose. Air made from white winter sky, and black frozen water.

“Is that what _I_ have done?” Will asked, a glint of both provocation and apprehension in his voice. As ever confused where Hannibal ended, and myth began. Will watched the thick swirl of sun and earth inside Hannibal's eyes and felt himself slowing his pace. “Are you the progeny of your God?” he asked, daring to graze mockery. “The keeper of Earth, Heaven and Hell?”

Hannibal walked with his hands folded behind his back, adjusting to Will's leisured pace, eyes reaching far beyond. The man considered him with such easy, silent serenity, as if Will's question was without need of an answer.

Will brushed his curls from his forehead, challenged his companion with a curve of his brow and a flutter of lashes as they walked along the sloshing coast. “Would one go to Hell for the betrayal of Lucifer's descendant?” he wondered out loud as he reached for the crook of Hannibal's elbow to curl his fingers. “Or would that earn them a special seat beyond the pearly gates?”

He smiled when Hannibal's lips pursed, as he looked past their conversation over troubled water. “You do not belong in heaven,” he croaked with a sudden hoarseness that tightened the nerves in Will's spine. 

“You belong with me.”

**  
“Ice,” Will said, as his fingers traced an icicle on the overhanging roof on the porch. It fell at his touch, and shattered at his feet. “Why not a lake of hellish fire?” He remembered the bible's Hell, made from scorching, blazing, forked flames that licked torturously at its prisoners. 

“Torment the beast of inferno with fire?” Hannibal asked, as he turned the key in the lock, and shook the snow off his shoes with a tap to the wall. “That seems rather futile, don't you think?” He stepped inside as his fingers worked the buttons of the wine purple coat. Will followed him in.

“I was taught that Hell is ruled by the Devil,” he said, watching Hannibal shrug off his coat to hang on the driftwood rack. “Fire and torment and punishment until the end of days.”

Hannibal smiled almost endeared as he turned back, and reached out to undo the buttons of Will's navy blue. “There is no such thing as an end of days in Hell,” he said, as Will watched his fingers working open the coat with precision and velocity. Hannibal's shoes touched the noses of his.

“But it's arguable,” Hannibal continued, “depending on your definition of _the Devil_.” The coat slid from Will's shoulders, releasing warmth and scent inside the fabric.

“The frozen lake is the beast's punishment for his treachery. He is the fallen angel.” Their eyes met as Hannibal undid the cashmere scarf from around Will's neck. 

“Do you think God gifted Hell to his deserter?” Hannibal challenged, a supercilious drop in the swirl of his pearly eyes. Will looked at him, and felt fingertips brushing the pulsing vein in his throat.  
The hand came to cup his jaw, squeezing gently around the bone. _“By the breath of God they perish, And by the blast of His anger they come to an end,”_ Hannibal spoke with gentle whispers, and Will fought against the rising current of the stream inside him. Wanting to drown him. Wanting to drag him under.

“Ice quells the spark of fire,” Hannibal said, releasing his hand to brush a damp curl off Will's forehead. “Ice can turn to water, and water to ice. But ash can never return to flame.” His eyes were gold, his pupils blown to blazing black. “Fire is reckless in its destruction.” A finger traced the shell of his ear. “But ice is patient.”

Will breathed through parted lips, as fingers trailed down the lines of his throat. “Fire destroys, until nothing remains,” Hannibal spoke, lost in the image behind his own eyes as he smiled at Will with a glint of sharp teeth. A flicker of light, and Will saw the skin turning black, the eyes turning red, the antlers curling up from the sides of his skull.

“And then it dies,” Will whispered, as his eyes grew large at the sight. He could smell the charcoal, the smoke and the flesh. Swallowed by eyes of blood and wine. “Ice lasts forever,” Hannibal said, his voice unchanged, with deep distortion pushing past his vocal cords. “It burns like flames, but it kills one limb at a time.”

Will reached to curl his fingers around the wrist by his throat, and felt Hannibal's elevated pulse thumping against his fingers. “Ice is patient,” he repeated, lips grazing fingertips.

“Fire consumes,” Hannibal said, his black antlers hollow like bones. “Ice preserves.” A kiss was pressed to the black fingers, and Hannibal smiled gently down at his heart's desire.

“For an eternity.”

**

Will dreamed of dying, and waking up in paradise. His house was small and the forest stretched wide, as a dozen strays snoozed on the porch or played in the field. He was alone, sitting in his rocking chair and drinking scotch that coated his tongue with a smooth caress. But the loneliness tasted bitter. Will basked in solitude, but Hannibal's presence had never been a limitation. Hannibal's bones, his skin and blood, his life and mind and nefarious soul; they were an extension of his own.

But Hannibal didn't belong in the Lord's heavenly kingdom. 

And paradise became a penalty. 

Will opened his eyes at the sound of a bird. A shrill cry that rang through the glass walls and gripped him by the throat. 

He sat up, and saw the other side of the bed made and empty, as the air buzzed with the distant rattle of the coffee grinder. His bare feet touched the floor. 

The lake was still, solid, with one lone swan sitting along the edge of the hole. Will had created it a day earlier to help the fauna find their water and food. He had hacked at the ice with a heavy, blunt axe, until his hands had been sore and his arms tired.

The swan cried a dreadful screech, and Will rushed to pull his sweater over his head and hoist up yesterday's jeans. He hurried out through the back door and followed the noises of peril to the lake, where he could see the white bird flapping her wings and shaking her head. The webbings of her toes were frozen to the surface, where the water had washed over them while she was drinking.  
She was trapped on the ice.

“Shhh,” Will tried to soothe her as she shrieked at the sight of him. “...easy.” But the moment he placed one foot upon the ice, she panicked, and struggled harder against the hold. Another piercing cry, and her feet ripped free from the gripping ice.

She lifted herself with the strength of her beating wings, and Will watched her as she flew. On the ice were two marks, made of a watery pink.

Hannibal was in his dress robe, sprinkling coffee with a pinch of nutmeg. “What happened?” he asked, as Will pushed the sliding door open with hands pale and stiff with cold. Hannibal looked golden and warm in their barn-wooden kitchen.

Will perched himself up on a barstool by the counter, as the coffee was placed before him. He closed his cold hands around the steaming cup. 

“A swan was frozen to the lake,” Will said, inhaling the scent of Luwak beans as Hannibal leaned his forearms on the counter. Their faces aligned, and Will watched the honey stirring around black pupils. “You added water to the ice,” Hannibal said, as he cupped his ceramic cup with steady fingers.

There was little air between them, breathed by both in a single breath. “I made a hole in it,” Will said, as the rims of their cups touched with a brief nudge of baked clay.  
“Accepting one's fate is to be at peace,” Hannibal said. “It's cruel to create an illusion of salvation when it's riddled with hidden dangers.” Will watched him through the curling steam and remembered the wounded bird in the grass. 

Bedelia's words echoed tauntingly against his ear: _“the next time you have an instinct to help someone, you might consider crushing them instead.” _

Hannibal's eyes shone like gems in the morning light. “Nature is peaceful in its suffering, until you stir it with good intentions,” he said, and knuckles brushed as Will tasted his coffee and swallowed it down with Hannibal's words. 

“I understand that better now than ever,” he smiled with defeat. He had unlocked the door to Hannibal's cage, after all. He could have saved many by allowing nature to run its course, but he had freed the beast from his Hell of clear glass walls and icy glares. 

“I dreamed about you,” Will confessed, placing his cup on the counter and licking foam off of his upper lip. Hannibal watched him for a lingering second. “I have noticed your anxiety at nighttime,” he said, as Will let his eyes fall to the stainless steel of the counter top.

“I see you,” he said, his lips brushing the words to a whisper. “...as the beast from the lake.” 

The high bell of the toaster caused the deep vibration to implode between them as Hannibal's eyes shifted from him, before he turned to reach for the plates. Smoked trout tartines. It was Sunday morning.

“I am no beast, Will,” Hannibal said, as he lathered the fresh slices of focaccia bread with cream cheese and lemon zest. And Will watched him, remembering the paintings and illustrations of Jesus Christ, outlined with an aura of pure, white light. He could see Hannibal in the same design, silhouette stained with thick, dark blood and curling, black smoke. 

“Then what did I set free?” he asked, as Hannibal's hands paused over arugula scrambled eggs. Will watched the pupils pushing to the rim until only a wedding band of gold remained. He slid off of his stool to walk around the counter, pushing his arm over Hannibal's back and grabbing the shoulder nearest to him. “Are you the black lined messiah that defies God and scoffs at his correcting finger?” he breathed hard enough to hiss, and Hannibal's black eyes rested silently on his.

“I have seen the humanity,” Will professed, digging fingers against the bone. He had seen the tears, the tribulation and the tenderness in the lines of his skin when it was the two of them, surrendering to the thrumming of the night.

“I have seen the diabolical,” he persisted, and watched the deep spill of darkness coiling inside honey gold. Will felt fingers tightening near the waist of his shirt, and clenched his teeth at the tremor that spread through his bones. “When my brain was burning with Encephalitis, I saw the darkness in you,” he spoke, his voice scratched with quivers. “I saw you as the Devil.” 

Hannibal watched him. The softness of his expression contrasting the tight fingers in Will's clothes. “You remember the angel maker,” he said with the waves of a gentle stream. “Disease brought him the gift to see the sin beneath the facade.”

Will scraped his nails along Hannibal's robe. He remembered envisioning the dead man envisioning _him_, and seeing his own head burning with sin. 

Hannibal watched him, as if he watched the memories playing on the surface of his retina. “How did you see yourself, inside those visions?” he asked, as he pressed two light fingers beneath Will's chin. Will remembered the antlers, growing from his head, his neck, along the length of his spine and through the roof of his visitors' cage.

“Becoming,” he said, feeling his own eyes blowing open as barriers broke and spattered like the icicle on the roof.

“What?” Hannibal asked him, but the answer was already in his eyes.

“You.”

**

Will watched the blood circling down the drain as he washed his hands in the sink. It was the first time since the Dragon that he had been participating, rather than observing.  
Beside him, Hannibal was cutting meat into fillets. His skin was black. His eyes were red. The antlers were curved like the gateway of a cemetery. 

“Is this real?” Will asked him, as he watched the blood on Hannibal's fingers disappearing into the skin, as if soaked up by a flesh-made sponge. He reached to touch the ink-black hands on raw meat, and Hannibal released the knife, curling fingers around Will's, whose pale hands remained unstained. 

“You are not a fallen angel,” Will breathed, as he stepped closer to the eyes of blood and wine. “You are not the beast.” His fingers reached for the bones of Hannibal's cheeks, and felt the sharp edges with the tips.

“You are the Devil's progeny,” he whispered, smelling smoke and blood and decay. Home. 

“And the Devil is God.” 

Hannibal closed his eyes and bathed in the touch of Will's trembling hand. “If I asked you to come with me to the frozen lake, rip the wings off the beast and watch the ice melt until nine layers of Hell fall free through the hole, would you join me?” he asked, his voice a caress as Will pushed his face into the hand that supported his jaw.

His lips twitched unsteadily in the warm light of the basement, as his pupils pushed black over ocean blue. 

“I think I have proven by now, that I will follow you anywhere.”

**

“What do you think?” Hannibal asked, as they stood by the rim of the frozen lake. “Shall we finally paint the walls, redo the garden, call it home?”

They looked at the tall house, made of wood and glass, bones and ice, as the fingers of their leather gloves hooked around each other.

“Do you want to start our lives, surrounded by the ice of the lake?”

Will smiled, and looked at the man beside him. Silver and gold, wine and blood, flesh and coal.

_“I do.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you so much for reading! ^.^


End file.
